


A Plastic Tree

by Keolah



Category: Urban Dead
Genre: Animate Object, Christmas Tree, Gen, Horror, Murder, NaNoWriMo, POV First Person, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keolah/pseuds/Keolah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tale of how an animated plastic Christmas tree became a bloodthirsty murderer in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Awakening

I am a plastic tree. I do not have a name. I never really understood what names were for.

I wasn't always the murderer you see today. I had hope, once. I had faith in humanity. How did I get to that point, you wonder? Well, let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I don't know when I first became aware. It was a quiet thing, slipping into consciousness slowly and before I even realized it. I suppose I could not realize that I was conscious before I was conscious, but it still sounds strange to say it like that.

Voices. I heard voices, talking around me. I could not see yet, but I could hear, distantly and distorted as though from underwater. I did not understand what anyone was saying yet, but I listened. It took a long time to understand what they were saying, to make sense of the words, and I don't think I truly comprehended until I opened my eyes.

And open them I did. Lights, colors, figures moving about. Slowly, ever so slowly, I came to understand where I was and what they were. They were humans, inside a mall. I don't know which mall it was. I'd like to say it was Caiger, because Caiger was really the center of everything, during those days, but I honestly don't know anymore, and I doubt it was actually Caiger anyway.

There were zombies at the door. Clawing at the doors, tearing down the barricades, groaning and moaning as they came. I found myself knocked aside, tumbling across the floor on my side. I watched helplessly as the zombies sank their teeth into the humans, dragged them into the streets, and were eventually expelled with bullets and dumped into the streets.

The humans picked me up and threw me up against the doors again, along with vending machines and anything else they could find to use as barricades. I tried to speak, to protest against this treatment. I tried to move. I tried to act, to do something, anything!

My limbs twitched slightly, ever so slightly. I blinked my eyeballs, once, twice. It was only then that I realized I was not human. I was not like these others in the mall. I looked at myself, a green triangular figure of plastic, decorated in tinsel and ornaments. Some of those ornaments were painted as eyes. They were my eyeballs.

I am a plastic tree. I am not human. I do not have a name. I do not know how I came to life, what magic permeated my form to animate my limbs, and yet I am grateful nonetheless. I very much like being alive. Perhaps it was some variation of the zombie plague that infected me and affected me in a strange manner, though how it could do so without flesh and blood I cannot begin to guess.

No one noticed my movements at first, and I did not have the strength to pry myself away from the barricades. I was still mute, unable to make a sound. Again the zombies broke in, and pushed me against the ground, rolling across the floor to rest in a corner.

I could not sit by and do nothing. The zombies were hurting people. They tore apart people with their claws, ripped chunks out of them with their teeth, and raised by their heads to howl with fresh blood running down their chins.

With great effort, I righted myself. I stood up. It was difficult to balance and keep upright and took me many tries before I succeeded. The survivors were too busy with the zombies at the time to notice the strange behavior from a plastic tree, I'm guessing. But once they turned to try to throw me up against the barricades again, they stopped and took a second look.

"This plastic tree is looking at me," said one of them.

"You're imagining things," said another. "Just put it on the barricades."

"No way! The plastic tree moved!"

"Man, the zombies are really getting to you. Plastic trees don't move!"

"That one did!"

I wiggled my branches in an attempt to convince them that, yes, I could indeed move. I don't know how I can hear things, and even less how I can understand them. I can be thankful that whatever mystical force granted me life also granted me intelligence.

"Whoa, I think that tree really did move!"

"I think you're both drunk!" adds a third human, coming up behind them. "Just put it on the barricades already. You don't want the zombies to--"

At that moment, the vending machine that had been pushed haphazardly against the doors crashed to the ground again, and more zombies burst inside and ate all three of them. The zombies then turned to look at me through glazed, feral eyes, as if not sure what to make of me. I held perfectly still, not a difficult feat for one so new to moving, and the zombies ignored me and moved on.

The mall was no longer safe, however. I did not expect the zombies to be fooled about me being an ordinary inanimate object for long. I may have been barely alive, but I wanted to remain that way, and I also wanted to help the poor survivors somehow. I stumbled out of the building and into the streets, hopping at times and struggling to manage locomotion. Even just staying upright was a chore. But fear is a great motivation, and hope was strong still with me then.

Most of the buildings I passed were too heavily barricaded to get inside of, the doors and windows secured with furniture and anything the humans could get their hands on to protect themselves with. I finally found a building that I could manage to squeeze myself into. It was quiet in here, and I was alone in the dark, but I was safe for now. I could rest. It took a lot out of me to take my first steps.

I slept. I sleep a lot, really. Whatever magic animates me, I can only manage much activity in short bursts, and must conserve my energy at other times. I watch, though, with my eye ornaments gazing into the shadows, observing everything that happens around me. I was mistaken for an inanimate object more often than not during those early days, though I don't really fool anyone anymore. There are stranger things in Malton than me.

First things first, when I could, I took a look around the building I'd found myself in. It seems I wasn't as alone in here as I'd thought myself at first. There were humans on the other floors, in rooms, in laboratories, working on equipment, making serum for syringes.

"Are those syringes ready yet?" one human said to another. "We need to get revives going for the people that were in the mall."

"Just about. I'll get them right out to the cemetery as soon as possible."

I didn't really understand what they meant at first, but I felt a surge of bright hope within me nonetheless as the implications of what they were talking about dawned upon me. Those who were killed could be brought back to life with merely the work of a syringe. Zombies are not doomed to being undead monsters forever.

Grabbing a syringe, I headed outside to the cemetery that I overheard the scientists talking about. There were a number of zombies standing around, and as I got close to one, he said, "Mrh?" and looked at me with forlorn eyes.

I tried to reassure the poor man, and fumbled clumsily with the syringe I'd taken. It slipped from my grasp and dropped into the mud beneath my branches. Frustrated, I picked it up to try again, but I could not get it to work. I looked at the zombie apologetically and tried to tell him I was sorry, but the only sound that came out was a low hiss. Dejectedly, I shuffled back into the building again.

This wasn't going to work. I'd need to start with something simpler. Learning how to manipulate objects was a trying business. While I could envy humans their fingers, I had many more branches that I could move, and was certain that, in due time, I would be able to use them just as well as humans used their fingers. I had hope, and optimism. Nothing could get me down.

Yes, that was a time when I still had every hope for the future, when I believed that I could help to make everything better and build a brighter future for Malton. Maybe I could even find a way to cure the zombie plague, I thought. It might cost me my own life, since it was probably the reason why I was moving about and thinking at all, but surely it would be worth it if it would stop people from turning into monsters. How deluded I was.

I adjusted to life quickly enough, scanning zombies with DNA extractors and patching up wounded humans with first aid kits, gaining experience in how to survive and to manipulate my body. Moving around became easier, and I even learned about free running, to let me move more easily from building to building and get into the ones that were too heavily barricaded to be entered otherwise.

I was so innocent and hopeful that it even hurts a bit to think back on it now, and about how everything changed. But I will get to that in due time.


	2. To Protect and Serve

"Oh my God! It's a tree with a syringe! That's the most adorable thing I have ever seen!"

People got used to my appearance quickly enough. I am not the strangest thing in Malton, after all, and certainly no stranger than the walking corpses. I'm not even the only one that was never human.

I was restocking my revivification supplies in a building with NecroTech facilities when one human approached me and believed me to be cute.

"I thought you humans think small animals are cute," I replied in some puzzlement. "Am I cute, too?"

"You are!" the human said. "I've seen you helping people. I'm with the Malton Police Department, a division of the Department of Emergency Management. We could use someone like you to help us keep order in these trying times."

"Someone like me?" I repeated, turning my eye balls to look at myself. "I doubt there's many animated plastic trees in Malton. Though if you see another one, do let me know!"

The human laughed. "No, no, that's not what I meant. I meant someone who helps people, like you! Our units manage the revive points around the city to make sure that people can stay breathing."

"Oh," I said. "Well, in that case, I'd like to help out however I can!"

And so I signed on with the Malton Forensics Unit and spent a fair deal of time carefully reviving people and making sure I didn't revive anyone that wasn't supposed to be revived. Murderers and death cultists, after all, could cause a good deal of trouble if they were allowed to roam the streets freely.

Yet I was unfulfilled. Days, weeks, months passed, and I roused myself less and less. I was reviving people over and over, to what end? Why were they dying? Due to their own foolishness, much of the time, I saw.

Looking out from the third floor window of the NecroTech building, I could see a good view of the adjacent cemetery where we performed revives. I often tried to keep an eye on it for any zombies shambling in looking for revivification. There were a few waiting at the moment, but I did not have the energy just yet to go out and tend to them. As I watched, a human wearing a trenchcoat came out into the streets and into the cemetery, and began shooting at the zombies waiting in the cemetery, blasting at their heads with shotguns. They fell to the ground, and very slowly had to climb to their feet as their undead flesh reconstructed itself.

This is foolishness. It accomplishes nothing but to hurt the zombies who were hurting no one.

I rested at one point in a pub. That was a terrible idea. The humans got drunk and told foolish stories I do not care to repeat here, as if oblivious to the menace of zombies just outside the doors. Perhaps it should be a sign that I was doing my job well that they could feel safe, but I could not help but feel as if they should not be doing something more.

Indeed, in many suburbs there is little real threat of zombies. Humans are more likely to be shot by the living rather than eaten by zombies, in many places. But is that any real excuse for idleness? There's so many things that people could be doing. Working toward survival, to a cure, to long-term societal adjustment to the altered state of things.

Instead, we get... nothing.

Why should I work and fight when the humans will not?

I went dormant, and did not wake again for a long time. I could not muster the energy, and so I rested. Nothing more than an ordinary plastic tree again. Ignored by the zombies, I rested, and let my consciousness fade, unaware even of the passing of time.

And then, one day, I woke again. I am uncertain exactly what stirred me to consciousness again, but I was filled with an energy like I'd never known.

Years had passed. The streets were quiet and had become overgrown with foliage, and the buildings were deserted compared to how I remember them. Certainly, there were still scattered survivors here and there, but it was nothing compared to the malls packed with hundreds of humans. I heard estimates given that the population of the city had declined drastically in the last several years, even counting the undead. There's only a fraction of the people here who used to be. What happened to the others? There's whispers that some may have escaped, but the more pessimistic thought is that they simply went down and never stood up again. Did they die a true and final death, or did they, like me, merely go dormant for a time and may rise again later?

I don't know, but in the meantime, the Malton Police Department had apparently forgotten I exist. My old keys and passwords no longer worked, perhaps unsurprisingly. I did not really care to remind them, however. Perhaps it was just as well. I had had very little contact with them after I joined, leaving me only to do needless paperwork of revivification request processing and bounty reporting. I had become somewhat disillusioned with them.

The Department of Emergency Management has failed Malton. They claimed once to cover and organize the entire city, but that isn't true and was never true. Their self-importance is only matched by their ineffectuality. Rather than uplift or assisting the city, it has been left to stagnate. There is rot in this city, decay that goes deeper than the zombie plague.

I have energy, the drive to act. I still have hope, of sorts. But I no longer have faith in humanity. Left to their own devices, they will do the bare minimum required for their survival, and no more. And yet, I was uncertain. I wished to do something, but I did not know what should be done.

While wandering aimlessly about the city, I was attacked by zombies and torn apart by their claws and teeth. I found myself laying outside on the streets, and with great effort pulled myself upright again. That was unpleasant. I hadn't even realized I could become zombified, or that the zombies would attack me at all, but it seems that they no longer mistake me for just another inanimate object.

My thoughts were slowed, and my ability to speak and manipulate my branches was limited. Still, this wasn't hopeless. If the zombie plague can infect me, they can probably revive me with a syringe to my trunk. I wasn't certain of where the current revive points in this area were, but I knew cemeteries were often used for revivification, so I shuffled off toward the nearest cemetery.

I waited there for a long time. Days passed, and another zombie came to wait with me. No one emerged from the nearby buildings to revive us. I had the energy to move, to act, and what was I to do with it? For lack of anything better to do, I flailed clumsily at the zombie in front of me, hitting him with my branches. I'd never been violent and didn't really know how to fight, so it took quite a while before I was able to bring my opponent to the ground.

It was pretty pointless, I know. You can't fight zombies like this, and without shooting them in the head it won't even slow them down. Nonetheless, it was good experience in moving my limbs again, and I felt stronger merely for having done it, even if I felt a little sorry for my hapless victim.

I waited for another couple days, and still failing to get revived and the zombie not standing up again, I wandered off to find another revive point. I crossed four suburbs before someone finally came out with a syringe for me. The man in a lab coat looked at me in confusion for a few moments before saying, "Is this a... zombie tree?"

"Mrh," I murmured.

"Well, I suppose you're looking for a revive," the doctor said. "Let's see, how do I manage this. I suppose I'll just stick this in your trunk and hope for the best?"

He stuck the syringe into my plastic trunk and injected the serum into me. It burned a little as it went through me and spread out to my limbs, and I shuddered and collapsed under its effects.

I'm not overly fond of being a zombie and didn't really care to repeat the experience, but while it was my first, this would be far from my only death. I didn't even live all that long after that. I'd gone from never dying, to dying quite frequently.

I cautiously roamed the streets, extracting DNA from zombies and scanning it to identify them. As I did so, I ran across one whose data noted him as being a member of the Malton Police Department. I sighed a little to myself. I was still technically a member, wasn't I? I pulled out a syringe and said, "Let's get you breathing again, officer," and revived him obligatorily.

I wandered into southeastern Malton, into a suburb where I passed by many buildings that had fallen into ruin. I saw few signs of the living, and the dead roamed the streets, shambling slowly along as groans echoed in the distance.

Over the suburb loomed the shadow of an old military fort, its walls smeared with layers of dried blood and gore but still intact. Dodging between the zombies, I ducked inside the gatehouse.

The handful of human inside were ragged and weary, and glanced up at me with not even the faintest bit of surprise. These people have seen it all, and are no longer shocked by anyone's strange appearance, only whether someone is a zombie or not.

"A walking plastic tree?" said one of them. "Sure, why not."

"I'm here to help," I told them.

"Do you have medical training?" asked another one. "Most of us are wounded and I think some are probably infected."

"I've got first aid supplies," I replied. "I'll see what I can do."

I still felt that I had to help where I could. I brought out what supplies I had to heal the wounded, but there was only so much I could do with what I had on hand.

"Can't you do anything more?" a human asked.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm spent for now."

"Go back to the infirmary to get more supplies, then."

"I'll do it later, when I've rested," I replied.

"Are you disobeying my orders?" the human blustered. "This is insubordination!"

"No!" I insisted. "I'll get to it when I can. I just can't right now. I hardly even have the energy to speak!"

The man grumbled a bit, but let it go for the moment to turn his attention back to the barricades. "Wait. Who overbarricaded the gatehouse? Do we have zombie spies in here? You!" He confronted a young woman who happened to be standing in that general area. "You were the one who did it, weren't you!?"

"N--No!" she said. "I'm not a zombie spy!"

"What are you doing?" I said. "I really don't think she's--"

The man pulled out a shotgun and started shooting at her repeatedly. Terrified, she ducked and dodged, hiding behind any cover she could find, but it was no use. He killed her in cold blood, and threw her body outside for the zombies, while I stood by helplessly.

"Why did you do that?" I wondered.

"She was with them!" the man insisted. "How dare you question me? You're probably with them too!"

"Don't be ridiculous. I just healed all of you!"

While we argued that, the barricades collapsed. They'd been heavily barricaded a minute ago, and now they were suddenly completely down. They tore the man apart and pulled me into the streets. Once again, I found myself dead. A zombified plastic tree is a sad sight.


	3. New Purpose

At that, I left the ruined fort behind and got a revive from a revivification point in the next suburb. I was demoralized and dejected, disappointed, and more than that, I was beginning to feel a little angry. It was an unfamiliar sensation.

I was tired of being helpless. I wanted to fight. Whatever the humans had been doing in Malton during the years of the quarantine, it wasn't working. Something had to be done. I still had no idea what, but I knew that following my previous course was not going to work.

The axe was heavy, and clumsy to use in my weak branches. This wasn't something I was used to. But it had to be done. I would not be helpless again.

I traveled north, back into parts of the city that were in better shape. Buildings were intact and barricaded, and many of them had lights shining out of their windows. It was good to see that at least some parts of the city hadn't completely fallen apart, but as I saw fewer and fewer zombies on the streets, I had to wonder if this wasn't another part of town that had forgotten they were in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.

In the absense of the horde, people grow complacent. I know people once required food and drink to survive, but with their bodies altered by the zombie virus, those basic requirements are no longer necessary. There is no struggle for survival, or competing over limited resources.

Then, as I made my way through buildings, I spotted a tall, vaguely human-shaped creature covered with shaggy, white fur. I didn't think much of it at first, since it's not that strange to see non-humans in Malton. After all, I'm not human myself. But then I saw another yeti, and another, and another. I'd come to a part of town that was positively swarming with yetis.

Puzzling over the mystery, I ran across graffiti sprayed onto the wall of one building that read, "Kill yetis, not zombies!" That was perhaps even more worrisome, to think that these yetis were more dangerous than zombies. They seemed docile enough at a glance, but perhaps they were merely resting and biding their time.

I entered the mall, and gazed at the yetis milling about the deserted shops, lounging about the food court, playing on the escalator. What a waste of power to keep that running just for the amusement of these beings.

As I wandered through the mall, shots ran out through the corridors. Cautiously, I followed the sound. In one abandoned toy shop, I stumbled into the midst of a battle. A wounded yeti roared from across the room, and a woman rolled out of the way of a wide swipe, tumbling behind a freestanding shelf. With a growl, the yeti knocked over the shelf, sending a box of Legos bursting open and scattering across the floor.

I rushed over to try to help her. The yeti hadn't noticed me yet, focusing upon the woman with face painted like a clown. She fired another shot into the yeti, but it hardly seemed to slow the beast down. Its white fur was filthy and matted with fresh blood. Another three shots fired in rapid succession, and the yeti stumbled back against the far wall, badly wounded. The woman panted heavily in exhaustion, pushed to the point where she hardly had the energy to move any longer.

"Can I help?" I asked, moving to her side and bringing out my healing supplies.

"Finish it!" the clown gasped. "Don't worry about me! Kill the yeti!"

"I don't even know how to fight," I say, setting aside the first aid kit and pulling out my axe. "But I will certainly try."

Hefting the axe awkwardly in my branches, I approached the yeti. It lay near-dead against the wall, a long bloody smear three feet wide against the wall behind it.

I thought I would be uneasy about harming other living beings, but there wasn't even any hesitation. I brought the axe down with all the force I could muster, slamming it into the yeti's fur. It was a glancing blow to the arm, sending a chunk of fur flying as the yeti roared in pain. I swung again, and again, and again, hacking away at the creature's bulk frantically until finally it stopped moving.

Lowering my axe, I looked at the corpse of the being that I just killed, however temporarily death might be in this accursed city, before turning back to the clown and gathering up my first aid supplies to tend to her. Although her face was painted with a smile, there was no warmth or joy in it, and her eyes were haunted as though having seen many terrible things in her lifetime. I pushed aside the fake flower pinned to her clothes as I patched up her wounds.

"That was lovely," the woman said. "Good work on that yeti."

"You alright there now?" I asked.

She nodded. "Thanks for that. Come on, let's get out of here. We don't want to be caught inside the mall. They'll kill us for sure."

The clown scrambled to her feet, none the worse for wear for her harrowing battle. She led the way to the roof and hopped across to another building, and I followed after her.

"Why would they kill us?" I wondered. "And who might 'they' be? The yetis?"

The woman didn't stop moving as she replied, intent upon putting at least a few blocks between us and the mall. "Yetis. CDF. Bounty hunters." She paused at a rickety fire escape on top of a rundown apartment building. "And why? Because we're murderers, of course. You're new to this, aren't you."

I blinked my eyeballs at her for a moment and answered sheepishly, "Yeah. I'd never, well, I'd never killed anyone before. That was alive, that is."

"Well, congratulations on your first blood, then," the clown said, heading inside and gesturing to me to follow. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Penny Wise, of the Flowers of Decay."

"I'm just... a plastic tree," I replied. "Of the Malton Police Department, I guess. Sort of. Formerly? I used to be, years ago. But I guess they forgot about me."

"How could they forget about a walking, talking plastic tree?" the clown wondered.

"I don't know," I said with a shrug of my branches. "I'm not worried about it, though. They were kind of useless, anyway."

The clown gave a dark chuckle. "That they are. Perhaps you would be interested in joining the Flowers of Decay, instead."

"I've never heard of the Flowers of Decay," I said. "Are they new?"

"Relatively. We're coming up on our second anniversary."

"That explains it," I said. "I was dormant for around five years, I think. So what do the Flowers of Decay do?"

She pushed aside some debris and opened up a creaking door, and stepped inside a small apartment. Once I was inside, she shoved a dresser against the door. "Alright, we should be safe to talk for now." The clown righted an armchair and took a seat. "So, you've noticed how useless the survivors in this city have been being."

"How could I not?" I replied. "I had hope for them, before, in the early months of the quarantine. I'd hoped that something might have changed in the years I spent sleeping."

"They're flotsam," the clown said, turning her head to look out the window. "Weak. Worthless. Apathetic."

"I don't know that I'd call any life 'worthless'." I moved over to stand beside the window. A soft rain was starting to fall. Not nearly enough to wash years of grime from the streets of Malton, though.

"As it stands, no one can die permanently in this city regardless," the clown went on. "And yet, is this really living?"

"Tell me what it is you do, then," I asked. "And why. I will listen."

The clown was quiet for several moments before answering. "We show them action. We show them death. We make ourselves their enemy, so that they do not forget the war that they must still fight. In doing so, we hope to force them out of their complacence to act. To fight back. To do something. Anything."

"You kill people... for their own good?" I wondered incredulously.

She nodded. "That we do. And even if the ones we kill will not change their ways themselves, their deaths can still be a lesson to those around them not to fall into sloth and apathy."

I wasn't sure what to think of this. I stared out the window with one eyeball, and watched the clown staring out the window with another. "Does it work?" I finally asked.

"I don't know," she replied. "Perhaps. Sometimes they fight back. It's hard to say how many of them actually change their ways."

Looking at her, I realized that we were both lost and desperate, in our own ways. Their methods may seem insane, but had my own course really gotten me anywhere? Had I really achieved anything by reviving those whose deaths had come as a result of their own foolishness?

"Very well," I said. "I can see your point about survivors, certainly. And while I don't know if your methods will really help, I really can't argue with them."

The clown regarded me silently. I couldn't be sure what she might have been thinking, but I had already made my decision. There was a new purpose before me. This was what I woke up to do.

"I wish to join your group," I told her. "I would like to assist however I can. I'm not good at fighting, but I can learn, and I could help out with healing and revives in the meantime." I pause, rustling my branches, and then added, "Then, when I am able to, I wish to kill people with tinsel."

She made a grim smile at that, and said, "Excellent. Alright, plastic tree. Welcome to the Flowers of Decay."


End file.
